Berretta factory leaves Md. for "freer" state

The Firearm Safety Act of 2013 made it difficult for the company to sell to it's employees

By Frank Miniter
Forbes.com

After 35 years in Accokeek, Maryland, Beretta announced it will open a factory in Gallatin, Tennessee. They are constructing a $45 million dollar state-of-the-art manufacturing and research and development facility in Tennessee’s Gallatin Industrial Park. Beretta had warned Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley (D) they would find it difficult to stay or expand in a state where their employees can’t buy the products they’re making for citizens, law enforcement and the U.S. military.

O’Malley pushed for and signed the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 anyway. O’Malley had said in a statement that the bill strikes “a balance between protecting the safety of law enforcement and our children, and respecting the traditions of hunters and law-abiding citizens to purchase handguns for self-protection.”

The legislation bans the sale 45 types of semiautomatic rifles (what some in the media calls “assault weapons”), requires citizens who follow the law to be fingerprinted and more before they can purchase a handgun, limits magazine capacity to 10 rounds, requires gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to police and empowers state police to audit gun dealers.

Sheriff Mike Lewis of Wicomico County, Maryland, told me, “The law won’t do anything to stop criminals. All the law will do is infringe upon the constitutional rights of law-abiding residents of Maryland.”